https://www.tumblr.com/andromedaceline/808321112190730240/your-kaitlyn-takes-are-some-of-the-best-ive-seen
This part: "Not really healing his emotional wounds or internal struggles. Things there way back from when he was a child."
What do you mean by that?
(Thank you for explaining)
NP! Thank you for reading, and apologies this took me a while to write, but I wanted to make sure I got all my thoughts out on this because in those two sentences there's a lot to unpack and explain.
What I was initially getting at is that Luigi obviously seemed to struggle a lot mentally/emotionally. After his surf accident, he seems to slowly spiral, until he is eventually telling his friend before he disappeared he was having a “hard time” and "no one understood him". Plus, there's some reason to believe he was also carrying a lot of emotional weight/trauma from his family and childhood in general (more on that later).
Throughout Luigi's timeline, there are a few key breaks or disconnects, especially the 2 years before the murder, and the move to Hawaii feels like the first major one. By disconnect, I mean a moment where he felt the need to escape something overwhelming, frightening, or unavoidable (I theorize there's about 3 major breaks during that time that ultimately led him to the path he's on). On the surface, Hawaii was the perfect antithesis to the nonstop academic grind he endured at Gilman, UPenn, and Stanford. It gave him a chance to slow down, live his dream life, and meet new people from all walks of life. But, it also seems like more than that.
After graduating college, I'm going to speculate he was at a crossroads. Stay on the West Coast and find a cushy tech desk job (then eventually go back home) or just immediately go back home to Maryland and take up his place as heir to the Mangione family business.
Since he comes from a well known and well respected Italian family in Maryland, with his father running this multi-business empire that his grandfather built from scratch, and as his father's only son, Luigi was likely seen as the next and best successor, just as his father was.
With his intelligence and exceptional academic achievements, the expectation and excitement that he would one day take over the family business was probably enormously felt from everyone in his family and his hometown community as a whole.
Yet even from a young age, he seemed resistant to the path of conformity and tradition laid out by his family. Based on his childhood stories, he was clearly very bright, pragmatic, precocious, maybe a bit stubborn, and often questioning the rigid rules and socially constructed conditioning around him.
Even back then, he seemed to want something completely different for himself than his family and peers back home. So now as an adult, instead of returning home after college or working a boring conventional tech bro life, for him, Hawaii may have been his way of stepping off both those paths, and at least, buying himself some time to breathe and figure out what he actually wanted, not what was expected/chosen for him.
However, once he experienced the freedom of Hawaii, it's clear he never wanted to go back. Aside from returning briefly to find treatment/surgery, he never really settled in Maryland again (as far as we know). In fact after Hawaii, he seemed to aimlessly drift for a while in San Francisco before officially falling off the face of the earth. There are many possible explanations for this, but my personal interpretation is that he was running and did not want to face his family, especially his father, nor the responsibilities waiting for him there.
One thing I’ve always found interesting is that in all the stories and informational tidbits that trickle in about his life, we’ve heard basically nothing, zero about his father. Other than the fact that he has one and he runs the family enterprise. That's really it. There's no stories involving his dad throughout his life, rumors, fun facts, or any real glimpses into what their relationship was like, before or after the murder. Zip. Yes, there are some photos of them together, and they look happy enough, but nothing that really tells us whether they were truly close, distant, or somewhere in between.
If I missed something involving him in Luigi's life feel free to point it out, but from I can see, it’s mostly crickets from Dad. So obviously what I'm writing is complete speculation. I’m just exploring one of many possible explanations, but, this to me seems most plausible.
Obviously, the family is trying to distance themselves as much as possible from Luigi right now too, which is understandable. Still, it is a bit striking that he did not appear involved in the public search for his son, or in communicating with the PI when Luigi was missing, or even with the FBI like his wife did before anyone even knew what had happened in New York. It's also interesting that when Luigi was arrested, at the station, when asked who he wanted to call he only mentions his mother. Likewise, we never get a direct statement from dad on behalf of the family, given he's the head of it publically. As far as I remember, the only family statement ever provided came through Luigi's f**khead cousin, Nino, which is an odd choice, if you ask me.
Of course, none of this proves wrongdoing, abuse, or even any real estrangement from his father, so please don't take this as me criticizing or villainizing him. Not at all. I'm just curious. The closest thing we know is that some kind of "rift" formed between him and his family back in 2023, possibly around the holidays, which may have contributed to Luigi (among other things) to pull further away from the people in his life and eventually run away to Asia (the second disconnect).
My personal interpretation is that the "rift" may have been about his life direction. One can assume his father was probably becoming very frustrated with him at that point. Feeling like Luigi was wasting his time, talent, and potential in Hawaii, and at the very least, if he wasn’t going to work for the family, then he needed to do something with his life.
Also, from what I gather, his father was an older parent, already middle aged when Luigi was born. So as the years progress, he was probably thinking more and more about the future of the family legacy and when/if his son would finally step into a larger role.
It is possible that this pressure created distance between them, or even that Luigi just told him flat out that he did not plan to ever take over the family business at all, which could have been a very painful and disappointing revelation, thus causing his father to estrange from him too (hence the all around radio silence).
So with that in mind, I can understand why Luigi may have avoided going back home at all costs. Also, pride could have played a role too. Since, eventually Hawaii didn't work out for him, the idea of facing his father/family, and seeing all those “I told you so” looks would probably be gut-wrenching for Luigi. (If they in fact had any objection to him moving to Hawaii in the first place, which I personally have a feeling they did.)
Then having to come back with his tail between his legs, fall in line, and conform to a future pre-chosen for him from birth. That may have felt less like an honor, and more like a burden, even a kind of prison. Something he did not want to bear, and possibly added to his anxiety, stress, and further mental decline. Like he has a ticking clock behind him always.
Throughout his life, especially by 2024, he seemed deeply fixated on autonomy and feeling in control of his own destiny.
This desire was mentioned to the author of Luigi The Making and the Meaning (not a bad read btw), who interviewed Substack writer, Gurinder Bhogal. During the interview, Gurinder gave a little more details to the author about his 2-hour video conversation with Luigi in May 2024.
A lot of their conversation focused on autonomy, or a person’s desire and ability to live by their own choices and values, free from outside control or pressure. To avoid becoming a mindless "NPC". A topic Gurinder wrote about in a few articles that Luigi liked and wanted to discuss in more detail during the call.
But, according to Gurinder, at one point, Luigi brought up his own family's intergenerational traumas/secrets and even shared a very specific "family trauma" with him during the call. Now, Gurinder refused to disclose further what it was, just that he mentioned it in relation to the topics they discussed.
If true, it could mean there was some deep unresolved trauma or conditioned behaviour passed down through his family to him that had a huge effect on him. It could help explain how carried himself as an adult, why he always felt this need to “escape”, and why trusting people may have been very difficult for him, especially with his family or significant others. Through him wanting to control his life, he my have wanted to figure out how to avoid allowing this trauma to dictate the decisions in his life, similar to potentially how he saw it did for his parent(s). That he may have made him caught between defining who he was and who his family expected him to be. Add on him also dealing with grief and frustration of his back injury robbing him physically of his autonomy all in his prime, he must have felt like the walls were closing in on him from all directions. Hence his repeated desire to disconnect completely from it, escape, and start over again new (again, just my theory). That extreme pressure and anxiety around his family and life in general during that time, could’ve evolved from not only just running away from problems, people, and responsibilities, but to eventually taking on an alias, and becoming someone else new entirely.
One last thing I always found interesting about his story, is that he seemed to never sought professional help (as far as we know). There's no leaks or rumors from any one close to him that he had or was seeing a therapist at any point, nothing mentioned on his reddit, or any indication he was interested in therapy at all (I know that kind of thing is kept confidential between therapists and their clients, but still it's odd there's not even a hint) .
Instead he seemed to solely rely on self help books, blogs, internet pseudo-intellectuals, and social media in general to understand what he was feeling inside and how to manage it. Very DIY spirited.
While therapy is not a guaranteed solution, it has been known to help many people facing similar struggles, some he was aware of in himself, like family trauma, brain fog/cognitive decline, anxiety, and depression. I would say on average it helps way more than any of the other solutions he was resorting to above. So I find it fascinating, that someone like him, who seemed to take a lot of time and care to research EVERYTHING extensively, consult professionals, and find the best possible solutions to any problem he was facing, like he did with computer science, his back surgery, and what I imagine he's doing now with his trials, that we never hear or see him once mention therapy as viable solution. It makes me wonder whether it just never cross his mind? Did he intentionally avoided it or possibly tired, but never found the right fit?
Finding a therapist can be a lot like dating, and the wrong experience can discourage people from repeatedly trying until they find the right one. Which is exhausting, so I can understand the latter.
Either way, I'm very curious to know what his views on therapy were/are currently, whether he ever seriously considered it, and if not, why?
Anyway, apologies for the long post. I think there's something there in his family dynamic and childhood that led him here, I wonder if we'll ever get a chance to know if/what it was and how it shaped him. But yea, I think he struggled with a lot, but just didn't know how to healthily regulate himself so that it didn't spiral out of control. It’s not easy, especially trying to do it on your own.